Lifeboat Foundation

Self-organizing lasers could lead to new materials for sensing, computing, light sources, and displays by mimicking features of living systems.

Although many artificial materials have advanced properties, they have a long way to go to combine the versatility and functionality of living materials that can adapt to their situation. For example, in the human body bone and muscle continuously reorganize their structure and composition to better sustain changing weight and level of activity.

Now, scientists have demonstrated the first spontaneously self-organizing laser device, which can reconfigure when conditions change.

These days, imagining our everyday life without lasers is difficult. Lasers are used in printers, CD players, measuring devices, pointers, and so on.

What makes lasers so special is that they use coherent waves of light: all the light inside a laser vibrates completely in sync. Meanwhile, quantum mechanics tells us that particles like atoms should also be thought of as waves. As a result, we can build ‘atom.

An atom is the smallest component of an element. It is made up of protons and neutrons within the nucleus, and electrons circling the nucleus.

Would you like a warning before the world ends?

Well, it’s now possible. Extraluminal is an Internet of Things (IoT) device that will notify you an hour before the Earth is about to be destroyed by a supernova.

A supernova refers to “the cataclysmic explosion of a massive star at the end of its life. It can emit more energy in a few seconds than our sun will radiate in its lifetime of billions of years.”

Two massive asteroids, the size of a 40-story building are approaching our planet this weekend and are expected to fly past Earth safely.

BILLIONS OF YEARS FROM NOW, the night sky will glow with stars, dust, and gas from two galaxies: the Milky Way, in which we live, and the encroaching Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Astronomy by Lynette Cook

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is colliding with its nearest large neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). The merger will change the structure of both galaxies billions of years from now, resulting in a new arrangement of stars known as Milkomeda (“milk-AHM-mee-da”). The merging will significantly change the night sky. But into what?

The Milky Way’s thin disk of stars and gas is currently visible as a nebulous band arching over the summer sky. As Andromeda travels across the Milky Way, a second lane of stars will join the one that is currently visible in the night sky. The stars will no longer be limited to two narrow lanes after the final merger, but will instead scatter throughout the entire sky.

The chance of someone being killed by space junk falling from the sky may seem ridiculously tiny. After all, nobody has yet died from such an accident, though there have been instances of injury and damage to property. But given that we are launching an increasing number of satellites, rockets, and probes into space, do we need to start taking the risk more seriously?

A new study, published in Nature Astronomy, has estimated the chance of causalities from falling rocket parts over the next ten years.

Every minute of every day, debris rains down on us from space – a hazard we are almost completely unaware of. The microscopic particles from asteroids and comets patter down through the atmosphere to settle unnoticed on the Earth’s surface – adding up to around 40,000 tonnes of dust each year.

Artificial Intelligence has ushered the advancement of several disciplines throughout the years. But could it ever discover a new form of physics?

A group of roboticists from Columbia University wanted to exploit the vast potential of AI and find out if it can ever find an “alternative physics.”

Continue reading “Roboticists Developed an AI Program That May Have Discovered an ‘Alternative Physics’” »

Ever wanted to play first-person shooters on a monochrome graphing calculator screen? Well now you can! Or rather, you could for over a decade but I’m just now making a video on how to, ha.

● Links to the sites and resources used:
TI-Connect Graph Link Software.
https://education.ti.com/en/products/computer-software/ti-connect-sw.

Continue reading “LGR — ‘Doom’ on a Calculator! [Ti-83 Plus Games Tutorial]” »

A new division of Science X Network, covers the latest engineering, electronics and technology advances.